Victoria Gets Horizontal

I do a better job photographing standing or sitting models than I do with models who are lying down. I don't know why -- if I knew why, I'd probably do a better job. Such is the life of a photographer -- if you want to make improvements, you've got to work on your weaknesses, and that's what I do in this setup.

In the previous sitting, I thought I made some nice horizontal images of Kristin, but she wasn't feeling all that well and had uncontrollable coughing fits when she lied down, so we didn't make many. Having completed with our fetish product posing, Victoria & I move on to work on horizontal images.

Such a perfect figure -- it is a real joy to photograph Victoria A.!

So, why doesn't this work? I like the pose; I like the blending of different textures (skin, canvas, velour; I like that Victoria's entire figure is included -- nothing is cropped out. Okay, the right side of the image is a little too dark; we could have added a little more light on that side.

So, we keep trying.

Here's a favorite from this sitting.

Victoria is a beautiful, glamorous, sexy woman, and she naturally participates in the creation of sexy glamour photographs. Now, I have nothing against glamour, and I like to think that I dabble in the genre, but I primarily consider myself to be a "fine art" photographer.

This is not your typical glamour pose -- the hand over her eyes gives the image an introspective, contemplative feel. The touching tends to emphasize the textures in the image. Contrast this with the image below -- subtle differences, but not the same feel.

Pretty good! (Perhaps I'm hard on myself -- it's pretty good but it can be improved.)

Victoria rolls over.

It's probably crude & inappropriate for me to say this, but Victoria has a very nice butt!

What I like about this is that while Victoria is nude, she's not apparently nude -- her "naughty bits" aren't on display, but it is clear that she is not wearing anything at all. I love her curves, the small of her back, her narrow waist, the silhouette of her breast. I like the sensuous expression on her face and how she is touching her face. This picture invokes some passion -- can't you imagine running your fingertips across her skin?

Let's count this one as a favorite, too.

Here's a particularly seductive look.

Experienced models like Victoria are always moving, showing the photographer different poses & angles & shapes. For a brief time, Victoria sits up, and I make a little experiment. I put a little up-light behind Victoria, positioned so that it highlights parts of Victoria's figure without hitting any of the backdrop. See the high light on the bottom of Victoria's lovely right breast and on the underside of her right arm? I put this there to provide a different look to these images & to provide some tonal separation from what would ordinarily be in shadow from the background.

Sure, it's subtle, but I like it. For the rest of this setup, we use this up-light.

One habit of mine that contributes greatly to what ability I have is that I analyze & "deconstruct" all the photographs I see -- specially, I try to figure out how images were lit & produced. Because of this habit, I keep ideas, like this up-light, in mind & try them out throughout sittings.

Much as I love the way Victoria moves, I really want to work on more horizontal images. I ask Victoria to show me some poses that are more level.

We're working on it.

I love the subtle highlight from that up-light on the curves of Victoria's abs & ribs. I have never seen her in better physical shape than in this sitting -- that model boxing training must pay off. I'm glad I've included her entire leg in this picture -- her legs look terrific, and you get a good sense of scale & proportion with it. I don't know why, but I often crop the lower parts of models' legs, but somehow Victoria appears more "nude" when we can see that she's not wearing socks or shoes. Strange, huh?

This is the same picture as the one above, with a totally different interpretation.

I used to do this a lot, take my pictures & look for radically different cropping. I particularly am a fan of especially wide or especially tall cropping.

One final picture from this setup -- I think I added an additional light to the side to highlight the small of Victoria's back.

Such is Victoria's versatility -- most of the time, she poses for glamour photographers, but she does real well with some fine art poses, too. Most models don't have that kind of flexibility. I'll call this image a sitting favorite, too, despite the fact that you can't really see anything. But I love the human architecture you can see in her muscles & bones & curves & shape.

We made tons of images -- additional images from this sitting are available in the Out Takes Galleries. These galleries are available to those who have made a donation to the upkeep of this web site. See this FAQ question for more details.

Before the sitting, Victoria & I discussed the various setups we were going to try. One of the things I really wanted to do with Victoria was to invite her into my shower & get her wet. This is not always possible -- although models have been known to endure harsh conditions, like posing outdoors on cold & rainy days, it's another thing altogether to get a model messed up. But with a little pre-planning, Victoria & I chose a time when she wouldn't have another sitting later that same day, so we had no problem getting her hair wet. So, off to the showers!

This sitting concludes with Victoria Gets Wet.